Name of weekly column: Purple Patch

This week's contributor: Mary Jane Flanagan, training director, learnpurple

Every newspaper I picked up last week was talking about Wayne and Colleen's wedding. No expense was spared; from the 200k wedding dress to the booking of Westlife. Colleen was said to have been passionate about her ‘Big Day’, as most brides are…as for their passion in the bedroom, quite frankly I would rather not go there!

As a training director I travel the world delivering courses, motivational speeches and team talks. I am passionate about customer service, development of teams and ensuring relevance to the business. Like Colleen’s wedding no detail is overlooked from the exercises, the research I undertake, adding up to date anecdotes and funnies to where I sit the team in order to produce the best outcome for each. I am therefore often disappointed when the organisations I work for do not share my passion for their people.

I recently drove to the other end of the country to deliver the final module in our Institute of Hospitality Management endorsed development programme in a well known hotel. This session would bring together all the modules from the last five months and allow each delegate to plan an initiative to help develop an area of the business using everything they had learnt.

Thus taking the learning ‘back to the floor’ and ensuring relevance and outcomes for the business. I had gained a real rapport with the team and the hotel director had highlighted the improvement in their performance. Yet on arrival 40% of the delegates were not attending as they were ‘too busy’ and their general manger would not release them. Sadly, no doubt a familiar tale to development specialists out there I am sure.

For our people to gain continue professional development it takes passion and commitment from everyone within the business. With a six hour round trip it would have been easy for me to take the soft option and go ahead anyway and leave half the team with an unfinished programme. However I am too passionate for that! I actually chose not to run the session and have rescheduled it in order to ensure these managers get the development they deserve, much to the delight of the hotel director.

Like Colleen’s wedding, even with the five million reported investment they could not control the rain. We will always get unforeseen events within our business, but we need to find a way to manage these and still enable people to attend training sessions.

If we show a real passion for development and a commitment to allowing our teams to grow we will benefit in the long term through their increased effectiveness which no doubt will translate to bottom line.  

According to the national skills council in 2007 only 67% of businesses actively invested in training their teams. I wonder how passionate the 33% that were not trained are? 

How passionate are you about the development of your people and the service they deliver?  Are you as passionate about the development of your people as you are the profit of your business. Research has shown there is a direct link between the two.

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